Music Consumption Research Articles

Analysis of The Trend of Spotify

With the change in people's music consumption patterns, music streaming media enterprises have attracted more and more attention. Spotify is one of the largest music streaming media enterprises at present, and its rapid development has been attracting attention. As the market becomes increasingly competitive, Spotify's single business model is increasingly limited. Through the combination of qualitative and quantitative research, this paper concludes that the main problems of Spotify's current business model are as follows: firstly, it cannot produce content, and acquiring music playing rights only by buying the copyright of record companies not only consumes a lot of money but also has uncertainties. Second, only relying on a single advertising and subscription fees revenue model has been unable to meet the needs of enterprise management costs. Third, as the competition among music-streaming services intensifies, Spotify must be able to provide users with music that is more satisfying to their tastes. Therefore, to solve these problems in the future, Spotify can focus on creating its own record company, upgrading its algorithm, and developing its own hardware products to enrich its business model.

Live Music Consumption of the Adolescents of Generation Z

Getting more adolescents to participate in live music would increase the vitality and sustainability of venues and popular music culture. We studied 15–18-year-old Finnish adolescents of Generation Z and their live music consumption habits with the help of segmentation. The research questions were: Why and with whom do adolescents attend live music events? What kind of live music events do adolescents go to? and, What kind of knowledge do these typologies provide about adolescents’ needs from a broader perspective? Considering that there is a vast number of segmentation studies based on event participation motives, it is peculiar that there are no motivational segmentation studies on adolescent event participants. One of the reasons might be that traditionally youth has been considered as a single homogenous consumer segment. Our results showed that adolescent live music event attendees demonstrated different needs. Four segments were identified: adolescents driven either by content, scene, friendship or social factors. Article cover photo: Jaana Ahvenainen.

Business Models in the Music Streaming Industry: A Critical Review of Literature on the Role of Audio Advertising

This paper aims to explore advertising on music streaming platforms as an opportunity for brands to advertise in India by studying users’ attitudes towards advertisements while listening to music on these platforms. The paper is an outcome of reviewing several published journals and articles referring to music streaming services, their revenue models, and their impact on consumer listening behaviors. The paper presents an overview of the music industry’s evolution, the piracy issues involved, and revenue models of music streaming platforms; free streaming and paid/premium models. It discusses the music consumption behavior of users and the effect of audio advertising on the platform. Finally, the paper emphasizes the targeting and personalization of ads. The research only concentrates on the Indian consumer of music streaming platforms and is limited to advertising on India’s streaming platforms. The paper critically examines India’s potentially growing industry – the audio streaming industry, which has not been previously reviewed. It studies the users of music streaming platforms in India to conclude their listening patterns and behavior towards ads on the platform and further research.

El consumo de música en escolares de educación primaria durante el confinamiento

The main objective of the present study is to know the consumption of music by 6th grade primary school students during confinement due to COVID-19. An observational, cross-sectional and descriptive study has been carried out with a sample of 219 schoolchildren aged between 11 and 12 years. To collect information, an ad hoc questionnaire validated by the Expert Committee was prepared. The results reveal that the consumption of music by schoolchildren in 6th grade of Primary Education during confinement has increased considerably due to reasons derived from the situation of lockdown. The main music consumption habits are characterized by the use of devices related to new Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) for listening to music, mainly through mobile phones, tablets or computers. As conclusions, two out of three children prefer to listen to music alone and among their musical preferences is reggaetón, pop, rap and trap music.

Evolution of global music trends: An exploratory and predictive approach based on Spotify data

Music listening choices are considered to be a factor capable of measuring people’s emotions. Thanks to the explosion of streaming music applications in recent years, it is possible to describe listening trends of the global population based on emotional features. In this paper we have analysed the most popular songs from 52 countries on Spotify through their features of danceability, positivity and intensity. This analysis allows exploring how these song features reflect mood trends along with other contextual factors that may affect the population’s listening behaviour, such as the weather or the influence of the COVID-19 pandemic. Finally, we have proposed a multivariate time series model to predict the preferred type of music in those countries based on their previous music listening patterns and the contextual factors. The results show some relevant behavioural changes in these patterns due to the effect of the pandemic. Furthermore, the resulting prediction model enables forecasting the type of music listened to in three different groups of countries in the next 4 months with an error around 1%. These results may help to better understand streaming music consumption in businesses related to the music and marketing industry.

Research on the Influence of Narrative Strategy of Variety Show on the Circulation of Music Industry

In the new era, there are many operating elements of the music economy market, including the music market, music consumption, music culture, music industry, and music circulation. In the steady development process of the music economic market in the new era, the circulation of the music industry is affected by many factors, among which, the narrative strategy of music variety shows has more influence on the circulation of the music industry. This paper takes the music variety show " Sound Endless " as the case, selects 1-6 issues of the program as the research text, and chooses narratology as the research theory of the article. It studies the influence of the narrative strategy of the music variety show on the music industry circulation from three aspects, including the narrative subject, narrative structure, and narrative theme, so as to explore a better and more suitable development path of the music circulation, and put forward the corresponding development ideas for the popularity of music.

Listening to music videos on YouTube. Digital consumption practices and the environmental impact of streaming

YouTube is currently the most widely used platform for music streaming. Users listen to music videos rather than watch them. This is environmentally suboptimal since video data require more energy than audio data to be hosted and transmitted. Why are consumers using a video platform to stream music? In this paper, we sketch a framework for analyzing digital practices as consumption practices and their transformation in the context of the ecological transition. We interviewed 29 online music consumers from varied backgrounds. Drawing on practice theory, we conceptualize online music use as a combination of sociotechnical configurations articulating listening devices, types of attention to music, and the social contexts of daily life. We analyze how different platforms, especially YouTube, are embedded in specific configurations. We first establish that configurations in which videos are actually watched are rare. Though users are aware of the carbon footprint of streaming, this representation does not inform their listening configurations. We describe three types of online music practices according to the role YouTube plays in, that correlate with music passion: YouTube can be framed as a free and open listening platform (especially to casual listeners), as an efficient soundtracking device in many contexts, as a useful complementary listening and music sharing device. The paper extends the literature on green consumption to digital consumption, analyzing relations to infrastructures in a regime of abundance, and contributes to the sociology of online music consumption, showing how platform choices are linked with music passion and embedded in social contexts.

All Songs Considered: The Persuasive Listening of Music Podcasts

AbstractMusic podcasts have proliferated as public discourse about popular music. A significant part of the expanding podcast industry, music podcasts include titles such as All Songs Considered, Switched on Pop, Song Exploder, Sound Opinions, New York Times Popcast, and Lost Notes. These podcasts often feature a combination of conversation and musical selections, which highlight aspects of the music for podcast listeners. In this article, I argue that we should think of music podcasts as persuasive demonstrations of music consumption. Music podcasts present music as a subject for discussion and also implicitly model listening techniques, convincing podcast listeners to adopt specific approaches to music recordings. I explore three podcasts: All Songs Considered, Switched on Pop, and Disability Visibility. I examine how these podcasts present music as their subject, while advancing particular theories of listening that can serve or subvert privileged modes of music reception.

Music Recommendation Based on “User-Points-Music” Cascade Model and Time Attenuation Analysis

Music has an increasing impact on people’s daily lives, and a sterling music recommendation algorithm can help users find their habitual music accurately. Recent research on music recommendation directly recommends the same type of music according to the specific music in the user’s historical favorite list. However, users’ behavior towards a certain cannot reflect the preference for this type of music and possibly provides music the listener dislikes. A recommendation model, MCTA, based on “User-Point-Music” structure is proposed. By clustering users’ historical behavior, different interest points are obtained to further recommend high-quality music under interest points. Furthermore, users’ interest points will decay over time. Combined with the number of music corresponding to each interest point and the liking degree of each music, a multi-interest point attenuation model is constructed. Based on the real data after desensitization and encoding, including 100,000 users and 12,028 pieces of music, a series of experimental results show that the effect of the proposed MCTA model has improved by seven percentage points in terms of accuracy compared with existing works. It came to the conclusion that the multi-interest point attenuation model can more accurately simulate the actual music consumption behavior of users and recommend music better.

Review: She’s at the Controls: Sound Engineering, Production and Gender Ventriloquism in the 21st Century, by Helen Reddington

Review: <i>She’s at the Controls: Sound Engineering, Production and Gender Ventriloquism in the 21st Century</i>, by Helen Reddington

Music Roles Affect the Selection of Consumption Means: A Questionnaire Survey of People's Expectations for Music and Exploratory Factor Analysis.

People listen to music for various purposes, and the roles that listeners expect from music can vary from person to person. In recent years, “subscription-based streaming services” (hereinafter referred to as “subscription”) have increased their share in the music market, thereby changing the way people listen to music. Though, the impact of this change on the role of music, is yet to be explored. This study analyzed survey data to reveal the relationship between the expected roles of music and the choice of music consumption means, including subscription. In particular, we obtained that a factor in the use of subscription is the expectation of constructing a personal identity. We also found that both purchase and live usage are affected by two factors: the expectation of fan identity construction and the expectation of artist contribution. This indicates that subscription is not an alternative to the existing means, but a new kind of consumption means in the music market. It was also found that subscription facilitates the construction of personal identity through music.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12626-022-00115-x.

Potential of Composition Market: Public acceptance in translated musical works on YouTube platform

Due to the worldwide demand for music consumption, more songs are translated into several languages. However, it remains a question whether the public i) prefers a loosely translated version, or ii) prefers a word-by-word translated version. Inspired by online data mining in business analytics, this quantitative research studied the public’s sentiments on two translated versions of Disney’s “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” song on the YouTube platform. Through semantic analysis, the researchers had found that the public prefers loosely, poetically, translated songs whilst preferring the harmony, melody, and musical sense of the songs to be retained. Keywords: translation techniques; compositional market; public acceptance; online data mining. eISSN: 2398-4287© 2022. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA CE-Bs by E-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/). Peer–review under responsibility of AMER (Association of Malaysian Environment-Behaviour Researchers), ABRA (Association of Behavioural Researchers on Asians/Africans/Arabians), and cE-Bs (Centre for Environment-Behaviour Studies), Faculty of Architecture, Planning &amp; Surveying, Universiti Teknologi MARA, Malaysia. DOI: https://doi.org/10.21834/ebpj.v7iSI7%20(Special%20Issue).3765

“Love lies”: A content analysis of romantic attachment style in popular music

During adolescence, music consumption drastically increases and many adolescents become romantically involved. Popular songs often depict romance, and teens may incorporate tenets of these lyrics into their own romantic experiences. Romantic attachment style is a primary indicator of relationship functioning, and individuals’ attachment style may shift according to romantic experiences they observe in media. This study comprises a content analysis of the romantic attachment style portrayed in popular song lyrics. Findings revealed that more than 86% of songs illustrated an insecure attachment and various song/artist characteristics were associated with specific attachment styles. We assert that parents, teens, and educators should be mindful of the lyrics adolescents listen to, working together to ensure adolescents navigate music’s messages about romance in a positive way.

The Extended Self: Youth’s Identity in the Music Consumption of Indonesian Spotify Users

The music streaming service provider app, Spotify, accommodates users to customize their music consumption to suit their needs. Not only for listening to music, but Spotify also allows users to show off their musical tastes through other social media channels. The process of music consumption in Spotify becomes a tool of identity construction as well as distinguishing individuals by their social circle, and makes individuals feel that they are part of a particular group. This study examined the process of constructing user’s identity through music consumption on Spotify, where there is a process of extended self into the social media sphere. This research was conducted with virtual ethnographic method towards Indonesian Spotify users. The results indicated that informants used music consumption in Spotify as a way to construct an extended self in the digital space, primarily through ownership of Spotify profiles and music preferences.

Music preferences as an instrument of emotional self-regulation along the business cycle

This paper studies the influence of macroeconomic conditions on subjective well-being and music preferences. The macroeconomic cycle exerts an effect on happiness and well-being that consumers counterbalance by modifying music consumption. We use machine learning techniques to make a weekly classification of the top 100 songs of Billboard Hot 100 into positive and negative lyrics over the period 1958–2019. When unemployment is high, society generally prefers more positive songs. Other macroeconomic indicators such as high inflation, high interest rates or low stock market prices also affect musical preferences. These results provide initial evidence regarding the use of cultural consumption to offset business cycle oscillations.

Digitalization of the music industry: trends and prospects

The purpose of the article is to analyze the main trends and trace the prospects of the music industry’s digitalization. The research methodology is based on the application of methods of scientific knowledge and systems analysis (deduction, induction, analysis, and synthesis). The scientific novelty of the obtained results is identifying and analyzing the main trends in the digitalization of the music industry and outlining the prospects for its further development and issues of its cultural research. Conclusions. It is emphasized that the technologies of social media, augmented and virtual reality, and artificial intelligence, streaming have radically transformed the ways of interaction between performers and listeners. Advances in music technology have stimulated the emergence of know-how in the creation of music, which, after all, is the essence of art. Emphasis is placed on the obvious need to study trends in the music industry – the irreversibility and unpredictability of technological change; also, the ambiguity of their evaluation encourages a thorough study of the digitalization specifics, which benefits of balanced implementation lead to its rapid spread and provide a growing impact on the entire music industry. It is noted that the principles of the music industry, new opportunities for music creation, options for interaction between performers, musicians, listeners and intermediaries, tactics of music consumption, as well as other transformations deserve special research attention. The culturological consequences issues of digitalization of the music industry also require consideration, including assumptions about the possible disappearance of the specialties of composer, conductor, performer, musicologist and others. The description of the transformations taking place in the industry can indicate the line of actions necessary to maintain balance in the situation caused by digitalization.&#x0D; Ключові слова: music, music industry, virtual reality technologies, digitalization.

Does Spotify Create Attachment?

This paper seeks to measure the extent to which algorithmically generated playlists, conceptualised herein as cultural intermediaries (Bourdieu 1984), create ‘attachment’ between consumers of music and producers of music. This was undertaken following debates in the professional music press problematising the ability of streaming platforms to create relationships between artists and listeners and, in a wider discussion, to generate sustainable income for musicians (Chartmetric 2018, Mulligan 2019 in Griffiths 2019, Music Ally 2019). We develop the idea from cultural and economic scholars that intermediation results in ‘attachment’ on behalf of consumers (Callon et.al 2002, Smith Maguire &amp; Matthews 2012) by formulating a definition of the term informed by insights from consumer psychology and applying this framework to a 115-question survey completed by listeners to Spotify’s ‘Discover Weekly’ Playlist for a one-week period. The findings suggest that the playlist was able to generate close to no attachment for those considered poorly-involved new music consumers, and only minor to mid-levels of attachment for those participants considered heavily-involved new music consumers. We therefore propose that algorithmically curated playlists can influence low-cost audience attachment behaviours while their overall impact on the economic success of artists may be limited. This paper contributes towards academic debates concerning the role and impact of cultural intermediaries and lends early empirical support to discussions within the professional music industries and wider public policy (GOV 2020) concerning the uncertain ability of playlists to influence the artist-fan relationship. In addition, by developing a methodologically precise definition of ‘attachment’, it is hoped that the framework provided by this modest study can act as a guide for other researchers to explore the concept of intermediation and attachment with larger sample sizes on alternative playlist types and on other digital platforms.

Jazz Places: How Performance Spaces Shape Jazz History

Jazz Places: How Performance Spaces Shape Jazz History

Put Your “Hand Emotes in the Air:” Twitch Concerts as Unsuccessful Large‐Scale Interaction Rituals

Recent years have seen mediated concerts grow in popularity. As physical events, concerts accommodate both small‐ and large‐scale interaction. However, the extent to which these interactions establish emotional energy online is debated. Combining video observations and video elicitation interviews with participants of live music on the online platform Twitch, this paper explores this growing form of music consumption while also adding to the debate on the appropriateness of the virtual sphere in accommodating successfulinteraction rituals. It finds that the online sphere is more suited to small‐scale interaction. Large‐scale interaction rituals are unsuccessful, suffering from acontext collapse,social convergence, and norhythmic entrainment.

Cross-media usage and explorative digital music consumption: An optimum stimulation-level perspective and evidence from China

Based on a theoretical perspective of the optimum stimulation level (OSL), we investigate how the cross-media usage (multi-device and multi-app usage) of individual users influences their exploration of new music in a music-streaming platform. We also examine whether gender moderates the link between cross-media usage and new music exploration behavior. We analyze survey responses from 1116 college students in China, and our findings show a significant and positive effect of multi-device usage on new music exploration. By contrast, multi-app usage does not have any statistically significant effect. The results also indicate that being a woman positively moderates the relationship between multi-app usage and new music exploration behavior. Our study contributes to the understanding of exploratory user behavior in a new media context by linking the OSL theory to digital music consumption.